The Real Issue with Grade Inflation

           Grade inflation is an interesting topic for anyone related to education. There is a significantly sized belief among the people of the United States that grade inflation is running rampant and unchecked among the U.S. education system. Where that belief stems from, I do not know, but in the article “The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation” written by Alfie Kohn, Kohn credits this opinion due to unreliable self investigations he deems as extremely sketchy in their credibility and in turn offers his opinion of a more reliable source on grade inflation, a research conducted by a senior research analyst of the U.S. Department of Education. The results show marginal change in the rise of grades over the years.
            Kohn conveys several important ideas to the audience surrounding grade inflation. First, the claim that students in modern times do less work than that of students in the past is nearly impossible to soundly back up. Second, the standard definition of grade inflation belongs to the critics. Personally, I believe that it is better to grade by a standard so that grading will be fair and can be referenced across the board rather than based on every single teacher’s opinion of how the grading scale should be. 
            Kohn addresses the topic in an informative tone based on an attempt at logos unlike in Harvey Mansfield’s article “Grade Inflation: It’s Time to Face the Facts” where Mansfield makes an attempts at ethos by placing his credibility in his position as a professor at Harvard. In my opinion, Mansfield is a believer of grade inflation due to his position as a professor in one of the most prestigious schools and arguably the number one in the world, and as such, he would naturally have high expectations of his students. 
            But unlike Mansfield, Kohn addresses the other side of the argument, where he assumes grade inflation is real and what its implications would be. This makes Kohn’s argument much stronger that Mansfield’s. However, what impressed me the most about Kohn’s article was the way he used the subject of grade inflation and weaved his article together so that he could address one final point that was linked to the education system in the United States and that is that our education system is fundamentally flawed down to its very building blocks and suppresses the true potential of the rising generations. Rather than encouraging learning for the sake of learning, grades put the emphasis on results and churns out excessive stress as a byproduct.